Volume, heat, and freshwater transports of the global ocean circulation 1993-2000, estimated from a general circulation model constrained by World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) data.

Abstract

An analysis of ocean volume, heat and freshwater transports from a fully con-strained general circulation model is described. Output from a data synthesis, or state estimation, method is used by which the model was forced to a large-scale, time varying global ocean data set over six years. Time-mean fluxes estimated from this fully time-dependent circulation have converged with independent time-independent estimates from box inversions over most parts of the world ocean but especially in the southern hemisphere. However, heat transport estimates differ substantially in the North Atlantic where our estimates result in only 1/2 previous heat transports. The estimated mean circulation around Australia involves a net volume flux of 14 Sv through the Indonesian Through flow and the Mozambique Channel. In addition we show that this flow regime exist on all time scales above one month rendering the variability in the South Pacific strongly coupled to the Indian Ocean. Moreover, the dynamically consistent variations in the model show temporal variability of oceanic heat fluxes, heat storage and atmospheric exchanges that are complex and with a strong dependence upon location, depth, and time-scale. Results presented demonstrate the great potential of an ocean /state estimation system to provide a dynamical description of the time-dependent observed heat transport and heat content changes and their relation to air-sea interactions.

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